Tales of Trenzlore: Series 1, infinite war
by Zoricus
Summary: The Doctors time on Trenzalore


A collection of very short stories I wrote about the Doctor's time on Trenzalore. Originally used as a writing exercise.

Year 10: The Doctor sat down on the bell tower, overlooking the town of Christmas he had been fighting to save for 10 years. He kept count of the years in a small notebook gifted to him by one of the townsfolk. He gazed out, if it wasn't for the constant invasion, this would be a beautiful planet. The perfect pink of the morning sky, the glimmer of the snow in the trees. A forest of beauty lay before him, yet he could not enjoy had time to sit down and think, he often had time to do such a thing. He thought about the other towns on this planet. Were there any? If there were had they been destroyed? He thought about the people that the town had lost in 10 years, how much longer would it go on for? He missed traveling, we wanted to explore."Doctor!" Called a solitude was over, he had work to be done…

Year 23:It had been 23 years since the Doctor arrived on this planet of war. No attacks had occurred for two months and the Doctor had found this newfound peace depressing. He had too much time to think about all the mistakes he had made in his long life. To try and avoid thinking of the Time War he started trying to visualize his life beforehand. He tried to imagine his wife, his original Time Lord wife on Gallifrey. He searched his mind for her, but he could not find her. Had his memory degraded that much in the years that had followed the time war? His own wife was lost to him… He fell asleep in tears that night mourning his family.

Year 31: The Doctor walked through the thick snow. His bow-tie dishevelled, his hair a mess. He had been awoken during the early hours of the morning by the screams of humanity.  
>A child lay dead in the street. The Doctor knew him, he knew everyone. James his name was, a smart kid. Always eager to help. The Doctor examined his body whilst holding back his tears. He couldn't appear weak or the entire town would lose all moral. He deduced that the boy had been shot by a Cyberman shot just outside the perimeter, hence why he had managed to almost get to the town…<br>The Doctor vowed that night that this war would soon end, but it didn't.

Year 37: It had been 37 years that The Doctor had been defending this town. Once again he stood on top of the bell tower to have some time alone and think. Yesterday he had walked around the perimeter of the shielded area. He had seen signs of combat just outside of it. From what he gathered some war-hungry Sontarans had gotten impatient and had attacked a squadron of patrolling Cybermen. This made The Doctor think of two things, first of all, maybe all his enemies would just destroy each other and secondly, how long would it remain possible to get food in from other parts of the planet that had surely perished by now? The TARDIS had plenty of food in it, but that wouldn't be enough if he had to defend for centuries. At least he had things to think of, he needed to keep his mind occupied or it could wander into madness. Later that day Simon tried to wake The Doctor. "Wake up Doctor, wake up!" He screamed at Doctor was having a nightmare. He was shouting in his sleep, shouting a language that no one in the town was capable of Doctor was recalling the Time War. He repressed these thoughts while he was awake, he had had 400 years to practice it. In his sleep however, he did not possess that much control. He saw the Daleks destroying his home planet as clearly as he had seen it the first time. He saw his family burning, although he had never seen that in real Time War wasn't over, not for The Doctor. That was his curse, the only oncoming storm, crying in his sleep like a child would. These are the horrors of war…

Year 39: "Check" Said The looked at his opponent, a head sitting on a pillow. He was playing in a small room underneath the church tower that he called home. Whilst waiting for the next inevitable attack he challenged his mind in many different ways. He had recently discovered that Handle's programming could adapt to chess, and with a bit of re-working he played like a grandmaster. Still, the Cyber-head had never managed to beat The Doctor. Until today…"Check mate" Said the robotic head after a few Doctor was stunned, he wasn't used to loosing to a head.  
>Year 43: The Doctor walked up to the established border of the town, where the church's shield's ended. Cane in hand he limped through the snow with four men from the town. The church had reported a disruption around here, something that had crashed against the shield at a hurdling got to the point specified and quickly spotted it. The Doctor always got a sick feeling in his stomach when he saw them, the feeling that occurs after more than 1000 years of hatred. The gold plating, the spherical egg-like objects, the horrifying eye-stalk….A dalek. Laying on its side. It had obviously tried the simple tactic of running straight first into the town. The Doctor walked, with caution, towards his ancient foe. When he was less than 3 meters away it's eye lit up a bright blue."Doc. Tor" It Doctor looked at the dalek with a look of hate that mere humans were incapable of, an infinite hate."Doc. Tor." It said again, obviously heavily damaged in the crash."I'm listening" Said the Time Lord in a slow voice with gritted teeth."You can not win" Said the dalek, it's blue light staring straight into The Doctor's age old eyes."Neither can you," Said The Doctor."You are not immortal Doctor" Said the metal casing, the dalek was clearly dying. He wasn't going to survive. The Doctor left. It was right, the dalek, he thought to himself as be made the journey back to town.'I'm out of regenerations, time will get me, or a silly accident. This needs to end'The Doctor returned to Christmas and wasn't seen for nearly a week. He was planning...<p>

Year 55: The Doctor sat in the snow. His legs crossed. His face to the ground. His hands resting on his knees. He was perfectly still expect for a slight tremble. If anyone were to watch him they would say that he was meditating, but he wasn't, he was controlling his emotions.  
>He had to. The rage of a Time Lord was a fearful thing. The oncoming storm who had destroyed entire galaxies, who had destroyed a star to say goodbye to a friend, was trapped on a planet. 55 years of boredom. The Doctor suppressed his emotions well, but he was used to moving on, here he was stuck. He needed a change...<p>

Year 60: The Doctor danced around his wonderful machine. Boredom can do interesting things to the mind. Some days he was depressed and sat around doing nothing, others he felt as light as a feather and as happy as a man could be. He whizzed around the console and then sauntered down to the underbelly of the TARDIS, he fiddled and tinkered for what seemed like days, enjoying himself for the first time in a decade. However, in the back of his head, he knew that his impending doom was arriving. No sightings of enemies in days and no regenerations left. Still, he ignored these rational thoughts for the joy of living life... No point facing his demise.

Year 68: The room was dark, silent, empty. The only feature was a lonely bed in the corner. A sad bed at that, mostly straw. The only remarkable thing about the dusty room was the man residing in it. Fast asleep, his breath barely audible but with a faint trace of vapor as the room was chilly. The man, like the room, looked ordinary. At one point many a girl would have called him attractive, but a century or two without grooming had changed that. He had a distinctive chin, long wavy hair. He had a long brown beard to match his hair. One could mistake him for a homeless man that had found a place to stay for the night. But no, this man was a legend. The man who had one the battle of demons run without raising a finger. The man who had singlehandedly won the greatest Time War in history. The man in invoked fear into the Daleks themselves. The oncoming storm. The Doctor, the mad man with a box. The bell rang. The Time Lord awoke. He had work to be done, they were under attack… The Doctor emerged from his sleeping quarters. Walking cane in his hand. His bow-tie straightened, his hair pushed away from his face. He walked, putting his weight on his one good leg, to the middle of the town. Almost everyone was there, having heard the bell as The Doctor had. The Doctor looked up. In the sky a great display of fire and death. The ships were too far up to tell which was which, but The Doctor however, had a TARDIS. It had been many years since he had stepped inside it though. He feared that the urge to leave would be too strong. The Doctor was used to being on the run, exploring the universe because no-one else would…He had no choice though, he was the protector of this planet and he had to find out what was going walked through the crowd to the TARDIS, clicked his fingers and stepped inside… The Doctor set off in his amazing machine. Up into the stars, leaving the planet for the first time in over a century. He was rusty. He didn't have the acute talent that he used to. He had missed his machine, the noise, the smell, everything about it... He zoomed up into the stars, enjoying every instant, every second. The TARDIS locked on to the closest of the battling ships and materialised inside of it. The Doctor grabbed his cane and his fez and of he went. His limp fading away, replaced by the joy of exploring something new once opened the doors, expecting the fresh smell of adventure. 'Fire... that's the smell of fire, not adventure, defiantly fire' Thought The ship that he was on had sustained heavy damage from it's attacker. There was fire all over the place. The Doctor wasn't used to the heat, but he had to find the man in charge... The Doctor walked down the flaming corridor into where the control room should be. Normally he would have been able to recognise who the ship belonged to but he had been out of the loop for almost 150 years. He pressed a button located next to what looked like a door and entered through the opening he had revealed. Sontarans. This was a Sontaran ship. The Doctor found himself on the cockpit of a Sontaran war ship, it had been more damaged than he had previously thought. There was no fire where he was, as a whole in the fiberglass had extinguished it before being auto-repaired. The Doctor looked around. Sontaran corpses littered the floor as the area lit itself up with a thousand warning lights. One Sontaran started slowly moving towards him, crawling on his hands and knees. The Doctor stood silently, staring at the wounded man, once upon a time he would have felt empathy, pity even compassion, those days were gone."H-h-help me," Said the Sontaran, managing to form a few words."You should be honoured to die on this battlefield, I know I will be," Said The Time Lord. The Doctor left, there was nothing useful on the ship.  
>Year 75: " They have been acting very strange lately, all of them. Every single one. Gliding through the air, watching us all down below. Some stop on the old cottage roofs, spying on us from the edge. Listening to our words and sentences. The secrets that we hold. But yet none of them care about what we have to say, about what we think of awful state that we live in. They're just hungry. So they wait, watching, not making a noise until it's just right to swoop down. It's to late for anyone to hear, for anyone to scream for help. So they begin to feast upon the human body. A pack of birds just ripping apart bits of flesh" The doctor sat in his rocking chair, staring at the wall with his eyes slowly closing, dropping off to sleep. The dim lighting just allowing the shadows to show in the background. The screeching sounds from the creatures echoed down the stairs that lead to his small room. He turned his head to the door, listening to the cries from the children who ran through the thick snow, never running fast enough to escape the beak that belonged to their killer. No point on running to help as you can't give them safety, nothing can be done to save their short, little lives that fait intended to end this way. He cared, of course he did. He's the doctor, a man who always has a heart ( or two. ) but what can be done? He's been told not to intervene, the birds get more brutal when anyone tries to stop them. First it looks like one bird, then two and soon hundreds start to fill the air, diving down on their prey. So all the doctor can do is sit, looking at the brick wall, shutting off the screams of the young. When the screams stop, the only thing left are the birds that sit on the corpse as blood soaks into the snow.<br>Year 76: Months have gone by, people hidden in their homes behind their locked doors and broken windows. The town of christmas silent, only sound that can be heard is the odd screeching that echoes down the deserted streets. Bodies lay face down into the snow, or what is left of them, as bones, limbs and flesh. The doctor awoke from his slumber, rubbing his face from the bits of dust that gathered on his bed through the night. Sitting up, he waited for the sound of a pack of birds to start trying to break down the roof. But yet nothing. Silence over Trenzalore. He got to his feet and started to slowly walk up the stairs, down little corridors and out to the outside world. He looked up to the sky, around buildings, down little paths that no one dares to go. Nothing. Not a bird in sight, not a scream to be heard. Making his way back to church, a bird sat in his path. Watching him, his beak targeting on to the doctors eyes, ready to attack the man of time. As the doctor stepped forward a gun shot fired from a opposite path, hitting the black bird in the head as the bullet flew out of the other side, dodging the doctors body by a inch. " what happened? Where did they all go?"" no one knows sir, we woke up and they were gone. Vanished from the town" said the man that slowly staggered out of the dark alleyway, a gun in his left hand. He nodded to the doctor and walked past him, heading back in doors.  
>5 hours before: The birds flew towards the light that lit up the night sky. All of them, darting towards it in their packs. All of them, disappearing through the crack in the sky, that lead to a planet that's so far away.<br>Year 80: The years passed slowly, trickling away like a thick syrup on the end of a spoon. However, like syrup, they all merged together forming an unmanagable mess that The Doctor was unable to organise. Some memories stuck with him: The Dalek invasion that happened some years back, he no longer knew exactly when it was. His explorations of enemy ships remained in his memory but he confused then together and ended up with a twisted merged together as well. They all were just humans to The Doctor now. No one stood out, no one was exceptional. Everyone just was human. Over the last 80 years the Time Lord had seen many generations die from the war or just from old age. He realized the uselessness of a human life. Humans, he understood now, are similar to ants. Individually they are nothing but together they could fight off the largest armada. The loss of live however, was obversed by him. He became resistant to loss and learnt to control his Doctor had been transformed into the Time Lords of old, that during the Time War had become akin to the very monsters he saved the universe from. The Doctor had been forced to become what he hated, and however he might try, he didn't care about the individual anymore. The planet was what mattered. Words echoed in his head."I die here" He said to could try and try, but much like the humans, he would die of old age. This war could not be won, yet he was too battle-hardened to care.  
>Year 83: It was the middle of the night. The only visibility coming from the dim streetlights. Dan held guard over the east side of the town with Sherry. They were in their thirties happily married and had volunteered for guard duty to help out the town. Their shift was half way done, and they were getting drowsy, eyes drooping.*snap* "What was that?" Asked Dan, adrenaline waking him up."I don't know" Replied Sherry, her voice lights flickered on and off for a split second. When they came back on a figure had appeared. A stone angel with a horrifying teeth-baring face. It was pointing at the lights. Dan and Sherry knew what it was. The Doctor had warned everyone about these creatures. "Don't. Blink." Said Sherry, slowly as if not to startle the angel."Go warn The Doctor" Said Dan, "I'll stay here to delay it.""Dan, it'll turn off the lights again, you'll die!" Shouted Sherry, still staring at the angel."Honey that's an order now go!" Dan said, keeping his voice level. Tears ran down his face as he stared at his death."I love you," Replied his wife, ran to the centre of the town, trying not to think of the husband she had faced his enemy, wondering how long he could got to the centre of the town. The town square was covered in people, the majority of the population, almost 4000 people huddled in one place. The bell was ringing, a call to rally at the church. Dan and her hadn't heard it. The town was covered in angels, on the roofs, in alleys, covering the streets. The people collected in the town hall were staring at the angels. The light of the TARDIS protecting them. The Doctor rushed in and out of his machine with the help of some of the towns children. Each time bringing mirrors out with them. They placed a mirror in front of each and every angel. "And you thought we would be defeated. It takes more than a couple of rubbish statues to defeat the town of Christmas" The Doctor said, standing on his TARDIS, giving a speech to human and angel alike. "We have held this town for a century. Daleks, cybermen, sontarans, birds! The whole lot has been here to take this town from us, and have they succeeded?"The crowd shouted "No!""And who's to say that you'll be any different! You're super powered, quantum locked beings, but we have one thing you don't have! Something worth fighting for!" The Doctor raised his arms in the air. The final mirrors were placed.<br>The next morning:  
>The Doctor was examining all the angels. Many of them were being moved into a circle surrounded by the TARDIS's mirrors. A prickling sensation trickled down his neck. He turned around. There, in a corner, was an angel he hadn't yet seen. A mirror in front of him of course. The Doctor walked up to the statue, something was off about it. A message was carved on the front of its body.<br>You will return.  
>The Doctor blinked, the angel disappeared.<br>"You will return" The words echoed in his head.  
>"I was running. But I don't know what from. I was running so fast, faster than I had ever run in my life. My whole life running from responsibility and consequences. I ran so far, for so long. And now I'm stuck defending the planet I was running away from."Two months had passed since the Weeping Angel attack. The town was still recovering. 500 people had died or been sent back in time that day. The Doctor simply hoped that they had gone to save planets. The Doctor himself wasn't recovering; he had had nightmares every night since the attack. He dreamt of the angel that had disappeared. 'You will return'. What did it mean? Return where? What for? For once, The Doctor had no answers. No plan. In 2 months he had left his room twice. But nothing happened, nothing at all. "This dream was different. There was no angel. I was running from nothing but I was so scared. What was I running from? I do no more running. I have been here for a century. What would I ran for? Why would I run!?" He shouted at the end, getting angrier and angrier. Of course he knew what he was running from. He was running away from Trenzalore, running away from responsibility once again to return to his life of travel. He knew this, but he couldn't say it. Not with company."It's OK Doctor." Sherry said. She had spent a lot of time with him after her husband's death. When she was a child The Doctor had been so nice with her, so she listened to him and helped him. She had done so since the attack. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Please, take a walk outside, it'll do you some good."The Doctor nodded. He left the room and went outside. Sherry was right of course. He needed some fresh air to clear his mind. The bright snow. The rustling in the trees. The laughter of playing children. The chill of the slight breeze. The Doctor had missed it. He said hello to everyone he passed. He felt better already. He walked through the woods outside the town. Breathing in and out, calm for the first time in months. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them he was staring into the eyes of an angel. A Weeping Angel. He looked away from the eyes down to the torso. Remembering never to look in its eyes. He gasped."You will return." He whispered. It was the same angel. He looked back to its face. It was smiling, teeth showing in a horrifying smile. "I will return." The Doctor blinked. When he opened his eyes he was greeted with red grass and majestic was home. He had returned.<p>

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